Discussion Forum

Maxing-out the CPU is completely normal. In fact, to get the most speed, you want Comsol Multiphysics to be using as large a fraction of the CPU cycles available, while it is actually number-crunching through your problem. That said, often there are many things you can do (geometry changes, mesh settings, solver settings, etc.) to speed up your computations or to use less memory. If you have particular models for which you seek speed or memory improvements, you may wish to upload them to this forum to seek review/advice by others with more experience. I see you are interested in CFD. In many cases, that means that unless you are doing very simple problems, you may wish to invest in a more powerful computer, if you can afford one. E.g., I would consider one with a dozen or more cores (or more!), and > 128 GB (or more!) of RAM, as essentially "entry-level" for most CFD work. If you have an active license & support, you may also wish to ask the Comsol-Support folks directly about what kind of computer(s) would be suitable for the specific kinds of problems you want to model. Good luck.

See also: https://www.comsol.com/support/knowledgebase/1267 and https://www.comsol.com/support/knowledgebase/866

Hi Cody, would it possible for you and your workstation (look at the data sheet) to switch your CPU from XEON W-2123 to XEON W-2195? I performed a CFD benchmark test on a (HP Z4 G4 workstation) Intel XEON W-2195 (18 cores, 36 threads) at the COMSOL Conference 2018 in Lousanne. The workstation was fast! For CFD simulations you should use the iterative GMRES solver with SAMG preconditioning (standard solver) to achieve best performance results. A minimum of 64GB or better 128GB RAM should be enough for most of the CFD models. But this depends on your tasks! Best regards Michael Rembe